Maureen Paley is pleased to host Gordon Robichaux for Condo London 2026 with an exhibition of recent work by Agosto Machado at Studio M. For his London debut he will present a group of his shrines and altars alongside related ephemera and works by Sheyla Baykal, Caroline Goe, Peter Hujar, and Jack Smith.
Agosto Machado is a Chinese-Spanish-Filipino-American performance artist, activist, archivist, muse, caretaker, and friend to countless celebrated and underground visual and performing artists. He has been a vital participant and witness to cultural and creative life in New York since the early sixties, from art, theater, performance, and film to social and political counterculture and the dawn of the gay liberation movement. As part of a cohort of queer revolutionaries, including Marsha P. Johnson, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, and Sylvia Rivera, Machado participated in the Stonewall Rebellion.
“In 1973, I travelled with La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, founded by Ellen Stewart, to the Holland Festival (now called the Amsterdam International Festival). I had come into experimental theatre through my friendships with downtown New York figures like Jackie Curtis and Jack Smith, and La MaMa had become a refuge for me.
After our performances, the company took a break. Some went on to Paris, I stayed in England for three weeks. I made London my base and took trips out to Cambridge, Hampton Court Palace, and Stonehenge, moving through the country mostly by the Underground and regional trains.
Stonehenge at that time, was completely open. There were no barriers, no guards keeping people at a distance. You could climb the stones, children ran and played among them, and people picked up small fragments as souvenirs. For me though, it felt like a pilgrimage. Standing there, touching those ancient stones, I felt a sense of spiritual reflection, something deeply personal being in the presence of one of the great wonders of the world.
As I moved through London and beyond, I was also watching the cultural shifts post Stonewall. Queer visibility was becoming more present in public life. Fashion and popular music were loosening the rules, opening up space for fluid gender and sexual identities. There was a feeling in the air, a new freedom, and traveling around London during that time, I felt myself very much a part of it.” – Agosto Machado, 2025.
Machado has presented two solo exhibitions at Gordon Robichaux in New York (2025 and 2022). His shrine and altar sculptures are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College in New York.
